SOUTHEAST ASIAN BLOGGERS NETWORK

Monday, October 15, 2007

Today, 15 October is WorldBlog Action Day. Fifteen thousand blogs will post about one issue – the environment. Responding to the call for useful, relevant blogging and heeding awareness... here’s BISEAN’s participation by reminding Southeast Asians how much of their forests are actually left.

The Southeast Asian rainforests are the oldest, consistent rainforests on Earth, dating back to the Pleistocene Epoch 70 million years ago. It has a biological richness and diversity unequaled by that of the Amazon or African rainforests. Yet Southeast Asia is losing its rainforests faster than any equatorial region, and has the fewest remaining primary rainforests. It is projected that most of the primary rainforests of Southeast Asia will be destroyed in the next 10 years. – Source

How much of our forests are left?Country / Percentage of Total Forest LeftTotal Country Area / Total Forest Area

1. Laos 69.9%236,800 sq km / 161,420 sq km

2. Malaysia 63.6%329,750 sq km / 208,900 sq km

3. Cambodia 59.2%181,040 sq km / 104,470 sq km

4. Timor Leste 53.7%14,870 sq km / 7,980 sq km

5. Brunei Darussalam 52.8%5,770 sq km / 2,780 sq km

6. Burma 49%676,580 sq km / 322,200 sq km

7. Indonesia 48.8%1,904,570 sq km / 884,950 sq km

8. Vietnam 39.7%331,690 sq km / 129,310 sq km

9. Thailand 28.4%513,120 sq km / 145,200 sq km

10. Philippines24%300,000 sq km / 71,620 sq km

11. Singapore 3.4%680 sq km / 20 sq km

With the rate we are destroying our forests; there won’t be any left for the next generation and our flora and fauna will go with it of course. Lying to tourists that we have so much forests won't do us any good either.

Look closely at the list -- you can see that progress is not the only culprit. Malaysia and Brunei, relatively the region's most progressive countries are on top of the list! -- and yet they managed to keep their forests intact. What we need is will power*lots of it!* to do action before it’s all gone. Make your blog useful. Pass this on.

"according to data from denr, 80% of the philippines is covered with forest in 1900. the country's forested areas have decreased tremendously from 21 million hectares in 1918 to only 7.2 million hectares at present. it has been said that we are depleting this remaining forest at a rate of a hectare a minute."

i hope by sharing this, each and one of us must do his/her share to reverse the situation, or if one of us in this region would plant a tree so there would be about a 500 million trees and counting...